Lockheed Martin will invest $50 million in maritime drone maker Saildrone and arm its long-range autonomous platforms with guided missiles for the first time. The deal involves re-equipping the company’s largest unmanned vessel and preparing larger carriers for long-range Tomahawk missiles.
Lockheed Martin will invest $50 million in maritime drone maker Saildrone and arm its long-range autonomous platforms with guided missiles for the first time. The deal involves re-equipping the company’s largest unmanned vessel and preparing larger carriers for long-range Tomahawk missiles.
According to Reuters, the 22-meter Saildrone Surveyor, which currently collects scientific and intelligence data and is powered by a combination of wind, diesel and solar panels, will be adapted to the JAGM Quad Launcher module and anti-ship missiles. In parallel, the parties are creating joint integration teams that will accelerate the design and production of larger Saildrone platforms capable of carrying Tomahawk and towed sonar stations for detecting submarines. The first tests with actual launches at sea are planned for 2026.
Saildrone has been supplying unmanned vessels to the US Navy since 2021, they are in 24/7 operational service and have already flown over 2 million nautical miles on customer missions. Under the agreement, the shipbuilding work remains with Saildrone, with Lockheed acting as the main combat systems integrator. The development will create jobs at Austal USA’s shipyard in the Gulf of Mexico, and production may be scaled up to other US shipyards in the future.
The US defense budget specifically allocates billions of dollars for unmanned ships and marine robots, and it is this segment that leading contractors are currently actively competing for. The concept of armed naval drones is seen as a deterrent tool in the Pacific and a way to quickly increase presence without risk to crews.
The combat value of unmanned boats has been confirmed in practice thanks to strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea. The new project of Lockheed and Saildrone translates this idea into an industrial format: the range and survivability of autonomous platforms are combined with missile weapons and anti-submarine warfare means. If the 2026 tests are successful, the fleet will receive a standard «designer» for quickly rearming naval drones for specific tasks — from coastal defense to anti-ship strikes and reconnaissance at long distances.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how Sikorsky, part of Lockheed Martin, converted a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter into the S-70UAS U-Hawk — a universal autonomous unmanned aerial system that has 25% more cargo space than a regular Black Hawk.
